Islamic Art

PARIS - The Louvre's astonishing new wing for the department of Islamic art undulates like molten gold, so liquid-smooth in contrast to the surrounding neoclassical architecture framing it that at a glance from afar it almost looks like a digitalized, fake rendering of what visitors can hope to see in the distant future. For the museum's enlarged, 18,000-piece treasure trove of Islamic art, opening Sept. 22, architects Mario Bellini from Italy and Rudy Ricciotti from France used the latest in computer technology to create what is the most significant, innovative architectural expansion project to the museum since I.M. Pei shook up the institution with his glass pyramid in 1989.

CAIRO -- An archaeological team in Egypt has unearthed a rare find: an ornately carved, 3,600-year-old sarcophagus with a well-preserved mummy inside, the country's minister of antiquities said Thursday. The discovery came as welcome news for antiquities authorities, who have been struggling to protect and preserve Egypt's cultural treasures amid three years of nonstop political turmoil. Last month, Cairo's Museum of Islamic Art was badly damaged in a bombing, and poor security conditions have led to looting at sites across the country.

AMID the calamitous violence sparked by cartoon images of Muhammad, it's only natural that the Museum of Modern Art would tread carefully when opening a major new exhibition dealing with the Islamic world. "I was acutely aware of a number of pitfalls," says curator Fereshteh Daftari. There are no caricatures of the prophet on view at MoMA.

PARIS - The Louvre's astonishing new wing for the department of Islamic art undulates like molten gold, so liquid-smooth in contrast to the surrounding neoclassical architecture framing it that at a glance from afar it almost looks like a digitalized, fake rendering of what visitors can hope to see in the distant future. For the museum's enlarged, 18,000-piece treasure trove of Islamic art, opening Sept. 22, architects Mario Bellini from Italy and Rudy Ricciotti from France used the latest in computer technology to create what is the most significant, innovative architectural expansion project to the museum since I.M. Pei shook up the institution with his glass pyramid in 1989.

March 12, 1991 | OLEG GRABAR, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES; Recently retired as Aga Khan Professor of Islamic art at Harvard University, Grabar is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton

Twenty-five years ago, Katharina Otto-Dorn, the distinguished scholar of Islamic art at UCLA, published, in German, an introduction to Islamic art. It stood out from the mass of introductory volumes to any art for two reasons: It was thoughtful and scholarly, and it expressed original points of view instead of providing superficial surveys. "The Art and Architecture of the Islamic World" is the long-postponed English version.

In an era when American newspapers and television bristle with images of Islamic terrorism, another side of Islam is on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington -- a show devoted to the calm and mesmerizing beauty of Islamic art. The exhibition, "Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the Victoria & Albert Museum," was not put together for political reasons. It has a more mundane genesis. The Victoria & Albert in London has closed its Islamic rooms for reconstruction.

March 13, 1988 | Pratapaditya Pal, Pal is senior curator of Indian and Southeast Asian art at the County Museum ofArt.

"The Art and Architecture of Islam" is yet another in a series of affordable Penguin books on the art and architectural histories of the world that is familiar to students as well as to most interested readers. While in the past the series has included histories of most major art traditions, a book on the history of the art and architecture created by the various Islamic cultures of Asia, Africa and Europe was long overdue. This particular volume, therefore, is all the more welcome, even though it covers only the early period (650-1250)

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is donating about $20 million toward the building of an Islamic art wing at the Louvre, the largest-ever gift to the museum in what Alwaleed described as "an investment" to better explain the Islamic world to Europeans. The gift accounts for nearly one-third of the $66 million the Louvre plans to spend on its new Islamic art galleries, to open in 2009. The rest of the funding is coming from the French government and several French corporations.

March 28, 1988 | STEVE WEINSTEIN and JOHN VOLAND, Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press

The first Islamic art exchange between the Soviet Union and American museums was announced Friday by officials of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution. A result of the 1985 Geneva summit meeting, the exchange will involve the two American institutions and the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, LACMA director Earl A. Powell III said.

The war in Iraq has raised urgent questions about the future of the nation's museums, monuments and archeological digs. Often called a cradle of Western civilization, Iraq has been home to great civilizations -- Mesopotamia, Sumer, Babylon and Persia -- and their history is entrenched in the region's cultural heritage.

Click here to download TV listings for the week of July 1 - 7 in PDF format TV listings for the week of July 1 - 7 in PDF format are also available here This week's TV Movies SERIES The Ricky Gervais Show: Ricky and the gents gab about soccer and other sports on a new installment of the animated series ?(9 p.m. HBO). 20/20: The concept of heaven and what it means to people of different faiths are explored in this new edition of the newsmagazine (9:01 p.m. ABC)

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art finally has fulfilled the vision it had for its biggest foray into Islamic art - a goal thwarted until now by the government of the Russian Federation. The only problem is that Angelenos would have to travel more than 8,000 miles to see it. In "Gifts of the Sultan: the Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts," now on view in Doha, the capital of Qatar, art that Islamic rulers had sent long ago to the czarist courts are finally on display - courtesy of the State Hermitage Museum and National Library of Russia inSt.

The Mogul emperor Shah Jahan sits cross-legged, in three-quarters profile, wearing a magnificent purple robe, jewels draped around his neck, a gold cloth wrapped around his head. His fine features are set off by a full beard and a slight smile. The emperor, who ruled India for 30 years and built the Taj Mahal, sits in the center of a busy painting, a constellation of supplicants swirling around him like planets orbiting a star. The small but lovely picture, no bigger than a laptop screen, depicts the Persian Ambassador Muhammad Ali Beg offering tribute to Shah Jahan.

It's an abandoned coal mining site in a depressed corner of northern France that was pummeled by the two world wars. Soon, a branch of the Louvre Museum will rise up on this unlikely site. Work is to start soon on a sleek glass-and-aluminum building that will house hundreds of the Louvre's treasures, from Egyptian artifacts to Renaissance paintings to Islamic art. The modern building will let the venerable French museum experiment, "giving us a new viewpoint on the Louvre's works," said Louvre Director Henri Loyrette.

It took time, but Israeli police detectives have cracked one of the country's greatest crimes -- the legendary heist of a priceless clock collection from a Jerusalem museum a quarter of a century ago. The 1983 theft, the costliest in Israel's history, saw 106 timepieces worth millions of dollars disappear from the L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art. Among them was a pocket watch made for France's queen, Marie Antoinette, that museum officials value...

AMID the calamitous violence sparked by cartoon images of Muhammad, it's only natural that the Museum of Modern Art would tread carefully when opening a major new exhibition dealing with the Islamic world. "I was acutely aware of a number of pitfalls," says curator Fereshteh Daftari. There are no caricatures of the prophet on view at MoMA.

CAIRO -- An archaeological team in Egypt has unearthed a rare find: an ornately carved, 3,600-year-old sarcophagus with a well-preserved mummy inside, the country's minister of antiquities said Thursday. The discovery came as welcome news for antiquities authorities, who have been struggling to protect and preserve Egypt's cultural treasures amid three years of nonstop political turmoil. Last month, Cairo's Museum of Islamic Art was badly damaged in a bombing, and poor security conditions have led to looting at sites across the country.

Art experts in the United States and Europe fear that one of the world's most renowned collections of Islamic art may have been destroyed or looted by Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait. Information about the fate of the Kuwait National Museum's 20,000-item Dar al Athar al Islamiyyah collection is, like much of the news out of the ravaged country, sketchy at best. Officials at the Iraqi embassies in Washington and London say they have no knowledge of the fate of the museum.

While lethal riots persist in the Middle East and American cartoonists and editors wring their hands over what it means to publish pictures of Muhammad, the Western world's curators of Islamic art whisper and wonder. As they understand it, the Koran does not forbid representations of Muhammad, though other revered texts have led millions of Muslims to scorn the idea. They know that many Islamic artists have taken on the subject.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is donating about $20 million toward the building of an Islamic art wing at the Louvre, the largest-ever gift to the museum in what Alwaleed described as "an investment" to better explain the Islamic world to Europeans. The gift accounts for nearly one-third of the $66 million the Louvre plans to spend on its new Islamic art galleries, to open in 2009. The rest of the funding is coming from the French government and several French corporations.